ABC
Brown joinedStaci KeananandChristine Lakin, who played Somers’ daughter and stepdaughter on the beloved TGIF sitcom, on the most recent episode of their re-watch podcastKeanan and Lakin Give You Déjà Vu. The producer recalled a particular network note about one of Somers’ lines in the 1997 episode “Just Say Maybe.”
“You were older teenagers, your characters,” he reminded Keanan and Lakin, “and you all wanted to go to an outdoor, weekend, sleep overnight rock concert. And Suzanne, uncharacteristically, her character said, ‘No, you can’t go.’ ”
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“The original pitch was it was revealed that she had gone toWoodstockwhen she was a teenager and danced topless on a VW van and smoked pot,” Brown explained. “The network went insane, and they said, ‘Absolutely not. She cannot have danced topless on a VW van. And if you’re going to do this, she can say, ‘That’s the only time I ever smoked pot. And it was a huge mistake, and I regretted my whole life.’ ”
Brown said the note seemed “silly” because the reveal about Somers’ character’s hippie past felt relevant to the show.
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“I was approximately the age of the parents there,” he explained. “I’m a boomer, and now we’re raising kids and telling them not to do things that we did as kids. And it was a real quandary for you. How do I tell my kids not to do what I did?”
“Topless was out, we dropped that,” Brown explained. He did, however manage to sneak in Somers’ line about smoking pot at Woodstock. “But she had to say, ‘It was only that one time, and it was a huge mistake, and I’ve regretted it my whole life.’ ”
“The world did not fall apart,” he joked.
source: people.com
